June 19, 2006

T-minus 24 Hours

I'm finally on vacation, and tomorrow we will be leaving to head up to Foxwoods! I'm very excited, as this will be my first time playing tournament poker in a casino. It promises to be a very fun and informative experience. Thanks to everyone who gave me some advice a couple of posts back. I'm sure it will come in very handy.

I will be playing two $100 buy-in tournaments, one on Wednesday morning, and one on Thursday morning. Both have a starting chip count of 2000 and a blind structure a lot like the PokerStars online tournaments. I think this is a good thing, as it makes the experience not totally alien to me and allows me a little time to play some good poker. I can't wait!

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I played in the PokerStars Blogger Championship yesterday. I was doing very well, having a top 15 stack fairly early on. Of course, this was not to last, as the majority of the people playing this game are dumb as bricks. At one point, I flopped top pair, and check raised a guy to price him out of any kind of drawing hand. He calls with middle pair. I am already committed with my check raise, and when he makes a set on the turn, there's nothing I can do. What a crapshoot.

Congratulations to Dave, who won himself an iPod by coming in six places higher than I did last year. With this year having almost twice as many participants, that's quite an accomplishment. Well done, Dave!

I didn't know anyone at the final table, and I'm wondering how many of them play poker on a regular basis. I saw some pretty donktastic moves during the final five, and I'm wondering if it was just these persons' time to win the lottery. It's unfortunate that none of the big players made it to the final table. I would have loved to have seen Scott or DoubleAs run all over those n00bs. Oh well, maybe next year.

EDIT: Apparently StudioGlyphic was one of the final tablers. I didn't know his avatar was just glyphic. Congrats to him as well! Unfortunately, I didn't get to the final table in time to see him.